The COVID-19 pandemic has abruptly changed just about every aspect of our lives and has presented every business with the challenge of uncertainty. While this is temporary, our marketing strategies have to change just as quick to adapt to the “new normal.” The difference in how businesses come out of this crisis is in how they weather the storm.
In order to see long-term results, it’s necessary to be proactive about making adjustments to adapt to the current landscape.
Bringing your marketing efforts to a halt to save money isn’t necessarily recommended and in the long run, may result in loss. Rather than ceasing efforts altogether, we recommend changing up your strategy and identifying areas to reallocate your marketing budget. While other businesses are pumping the brakes, you can increase your competitive edge by shifting tactics. Be proactive about making adjustments for the short term while thinking about the long term.
In order to navigate these times of crisis effectively, it’s important to remember that it’s better to position yourself for success now than to start over when business bounces back.
Here are four ways to change up your strategy to keep your momentum going:
Adjust Your Messaging
In these times of uncertainty, your customers need to know how you’re adapting to the crisis, and your messaging should demonstrate awareness and sensitivity. Without quickly re-evaluating your marketing messaging to reflect the circumstances you may risk coming across as insensitive and inadequate.
Consider making adjustments to the following:
- Scheduled content: Postpone or revise email blasts and social media posts promoting in-person events or anything that is no longer relevant.
- CTAs: Update anything that implies an in-person interaction.
- Ad copy: Remove any words that come across as insensitive and ensure your tone is supportive and respectful.
- Images: Rethink any visual assets that show human interaction such as events like concerts, warehouses with people working closely together, and people shaking hands in a conference room.
Host Virtual Events
With tradeshows and in-person events canceled for the foreseeable future, this doesn’t mean missed opportunities, it means the opportunity to exist elsewhere. Even though nothing can truly take the place of an in-person experience, the people who planned to attend the event still value the information that was supposed to be presented. Consider taking the event and moving it online as a virtual conference or webinar.
Determine if you can maintain the same level of value and quality that you had planned for the in-person event to properly represent your brand. Shift the budget allocated for the event to put it where your customers are now, which is online. If a virtual event won’t have the same impact, put those funds behind promoting any content or product launches that were planned for the event. Just because the platform you planned to use to promote your services or products didn’t work out doesn’t mean there aren’t alternatives.
Focus on SEO
Compared to January and February, online traffic across 20 different industries has increased by over 25% as of April 19th. Whether organic traffic is trending up or down for your industry as a whole, you still want to direct clicks to your site. This is a good time to focus on brand awareness and feed the top of the funnel—this downturn is temporary and current and potential customers won’t disappear. Use the budget you had set aside for in-person events and instead put it towards Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. Putting energy into an SEO strategy can not only help to build your brand, but it will help you stay top-of-mind long after the pandemic is over.
It’s also a good time to reevaluate what keywords your tracking and using in your content. Some of the keywords that were a priority before COVID-19 may be less important in the current landscape, and vice versa. If other businesses are pausing or reducing ad spend, that means there’s a better chance that you can rank for higher volume keywords.
Create Content
More people at home equals more people consuming content. In addition to being a big player in building SEO, Content Marketing done right during COVID-19 provides added value for customers by being educational. Everyone is trying to learn how to navigate their lives with the same level of instability.
Creating content that aligns with what’s going on in the world is a way to demonstrate your awareness and sensitivity while establishing your brand as a trustworthy source of information. Find a way to tactfully incorporate COVID-19 into content that’s relevant to your industry without trying too hard to create a connection between your products or services and the virus if there isn’t one. This allows your content to be relevant without becoming too promotional.
You can’t change the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, but you can change how your business handles it. Our team at ZGM is here to help you find the right mix to switch up your marketing strategy to come out of this crisis strong. Reach out to us today to get started.
